Upcycling a chopstick

Today I tried for the first time in many weeks if my hair is long enough now for a bun held by a single, long hairpin. Victory! Finally I managed to do this bun: http://kupferzopf.com/dutts/wickeldutt.html (the page is in German, but the pictures should be explanation enough) … held by a chopstick. Because I have no long hairpins as I’ve been wearing a braid held by two small hair ties for many months now.

Well, after half a day of running around on campus with a chopstick on the back of my head and getting stuck in my scarf and the hood of my jacket all the time I decided to make myself a shorter and nicer hairpin from this annoying stick.

I really like it now, so I decided to show you how to upcycle a random chopstick with nothing but sandpaper.

First of all you need a chopstick, needless to say. I used on of those you get for free with Asian take-out here.

Put it in your bun and decide how long you want it to be in the end. Then remove the excess of chopstick. I just stood on the tip of the stick and snapped it carefully, but you could use a knife, a saw, or whatever of course. Take the part you want to use and smooth the new tip with sandpaper. I used very rough sandpaper I had around, but anything medium should work as well. Make sure you get something like a blunt but still pointed tip, or you won’t be able to shove it through your bun easily (I tried before using sandpaper, and it was not funny, I can tell you.) I decided to flatten it a little as well. It should look somewhat like this in the end:

Put it in your bun and wear it with pride :)

(Please ignore the heap of boxes, my family came over last weekend and we put all the random stuff lying around in the living room on darling’s desk. We really need to organize the wires and soldering station and all.)

I’m thinking about adding some colour at a later point – after sanding the whole thing down a little it should be possible to use the acrylics and the simple water based varnish already in my craft cupboard. Of course one could add ornaments by glueing things to the thicker end to make it look more elegant, but for the time being I like the simplicity of my version. Although I might shorten it a little more.

The Author

I'm living in dreams of late summer warmth and happiness in aromatic meadows and golden fields, I'm living the life of a university student in a big European city in the north, I'm dreaming of a way of life I can't describe yet.